know he
lives only three miles from here."

"He is at home now, then?"

"Yes. He always _is_ at home, I notice, when--you are here!"

"No!" says Cecil, with a little faint laugh. "You don't say so! what a
remarkable coincidence!"

"An annual coincidence. But you don't ask me who it was I saw in
London. Guess."

"The Christy Minstrels, without doubt. They never perform out of
London, so I suppose are the only people in it now."

"Wrong. There was one other person--Sir Penthony Stafford!"

"Really!" says Cecil, coloring warmly, and sitting in a more upright
position. "He has returned, then? I thought he was in Egypt."

"So he was, but he has come back, looking uncommon well, too--as brown
as a berry. To my thinking, as good a fellow to look at as there is in
England, and a capital fellow all round into the bargain!"

"Dear me!" says Cecil. "What a loss Egypt has sustained! And what a
partisan you have become! May I ask," suppressing a pretended yawn
behind her perfumed fan, "where your _rara avis_ is at present
hiding?"

"I asked him," says Mr. Potts, "but he rather evaded the question."

* * * * *

"And is _that_ your Mr. Potts?" asks Molly, finding herself close
to Tedcastle, speaking with heavy and suspicious emphasis.

"Yes," Tedcastle admits, coloring slightly as he remembers the glowing
terms in which he has described his friend. "Don't you--eh, don't you
like him?"

"Oh! like him? I cannot answer that yet; but," laughing, "I certainly
don't admire him."

And indeed Mr. Potts's beauty is not of the sort to call forth raptures
at first sight.

"I have seen many different shades of red in people's hair," says
Molly, "but I have never seen it rosy until now. Is it dyed? It is the
most curious thing I ever looked at."

As indeed it is. When introduced to poor Potts, when covering him with
a first dispassionate glance, one thinks not of his pale gray orbs, his
large good-humored mouth, his freckles, or his enormous nose, but only
of his hair. Molly is struck by it at once.

"He is a right good fellow," says Luttrell, rather indignantly, being
scarcely in the mood to laugh at Molly's sarcasms.

"He may be," is her calm reply, "but if I were he, rather than go
through life with that complexion and that unhappy head, I would commit
suicide."

Then there is a little more music. Marcia plays brilliantly enough, but
it is almost impossible to forget during her